We met Lily (next Servas host) and she drove us out of town into new Taipei District in the North East. She has a little dog who’s name I never really got to grips with. Bleka is the nearest I think although I have found that many in South East Asia had a way of pronouncing L as an R so it’s anybody’s guess! Her little Dachshund had had an operation on its back four years before and it’s rear legs did not seem to work very well. It seemed happy enough though.
Over the next few days Lily made sure we didn’t miss anything. We walked to Shifen Waterfall and visited the little mining town of same name where lanterns are sent up into the sky with people’s wishes.
I’m not entirely sure I approve, these paper balloons with lit oil rags being sent up over the countryside. We saw several stranded in trees and one in the waterfall. One nearly came down, still lit onto some parked mopeds. This was quickly extinguished by the locals. We also saw everyone scatter when an alarm was sounded for a train to come come through (slowly).
Lily took us to her out of town home, she has another in Taipei City. What a fabulous place, down little village lanes and steps, on a hillside. It was modern but, not much used these days it seems.
At the house we had a tea ceremony with Lily (Chinese style apparently). The little cups had an unusual metallic glaze and we found out Lily had made the cups herself. Later we saw similar cups in shops at very high prices!
We visited busy Ruifang Old Street (another old mining village) during the evening and Lily had us sampling everything, I think the thing I remember most was Nougat, it’s Nougat but not as we know it! Often coated with seeds or blended with strange flavours like tea! The town is quite beautiful at night and Lily was determined we got the best photo opportunities. There is a feeling of the Ghibli Animation ‘Spirited Away’ about the place and I wasn’t the only one to see it it seems!
On our way home we visited a temple and Tatjana tried her luck again with the prayer sticks! She got her little slip of paper and the results when we tried to decipher them in Google Translate were hilarious! Her question was about work and the reply was:
“The doorman is over the knot”
“Have you ever shot Yu Weng?” Who or what is Yu Weng?
There were 20 lines of characters but the only bit Lily could decipher was ‘wait till autumn’
The next day Lily took us to a gold mine museum. She walks so fast and effortlessly it seems to me, often we were trailing behind. Blaka sometimes struggled to keep up. When we got there she argued with the attendant to reduce the payment as part of the tunnel was closed. This has been something of an on going theme to me, fierce Tawainese women!
We then visited the prisoner of war Memorial (Kinkaseki POW Camp). As you would expect a somber place. Mostly British, some US and Australian and Netherlands. POWs were forced to work in the mines, starved and brutally treated while under Japanese occupation.
Later Lily drove us to the coast passing the golden waterfall. The waterfall runs off into what is called the Yin-Yang Sea (shows as different colours in the water), and because of this, it has been considered polluted. However, it has been discovered that the color of the water is a natural occurrence. The soil and the water run off contains many minerals including sulfur, arsenic, and copper ore, and it is toxic. Prospectors to look for this kind of mineral run-off to indicate something worth mining for.
We visited a couple of strange coastal landscapes. The first Nanya rocks that looks like ice-cream and then at Shen’ao where there are mushroom rock formations. Both are formed by erosion, acidic rain wears down limestone leaving harder substances iron and copper behind.
We had to walk down a steep area and it was a scramble but, Lily with her little dog under her arm just trotted down! In fact she seemed to keep the same pace whether going up or down.
Squid fishing is big business here, in fact when we flew to Taiwan at night we could see the bright lights of the squid fishing flotillas far out to sea. We visited the harbour to see the boats with their huge lightbulbs that attract the squid.
Then we visited another little former coal mining area Houtong Cat Village.
This was once a prosperous mining village and there is a coal museum ‘washery’ there, it’s probably best to look that up, it’s a dry and dusty subject. Now it’s cat population exceeds the human population and it has become something of an attraction with shops selling feline related souvenirs. At the time we arrived not many cats were seen although there was a lingering odour! The cats seem to be cared for and I have read that many have been neutered by the funds raised in this place. The village now appears to be poor and run down judging by the dwellings.
Later after dinner we went to view the remains of Shuinandong Smelter all thirteen levels of the Japanese building now a spectacular ruin.
Sorry it’s been a long one, we did so much over two days!
The Travelling Bee 